The invention relates generally to shoulder pads for football players and the like, and more particularly to a spring arch system for such a shoulder pad.
Shoulder pads are generally designed to reduce and spread impact loads from colliding football players over the shoulders of the wearer. Heretofore, shoulder pad designs have included a hard outer layer, thick inner padding sections and various combinations of epaulets and web hinges. While the inner padding sections have served to absorb the impact load, the hard outer layer has served merely to spread the load over a somewhat larger area of the padding sections than would otherwise be the case. A shoulder pad having an energy absorbing outer layer in addition to the energy absorbing padding sections would be advantageous for further reducing the impact load transmitted to the shoulders of a wearer. In particular, a hard outer layer that serves both to spread and to absorb the impact load would be desirable since it would entail minimal additional weight or size for the shoulder pad.